Tuesday, August 11, 2015

There are many different definitions of Outsider Poetry. Some believe it refers exclusively to those who have a mental illness in the classic definition art brut by Jean Debuffet to describe the work of those creating art outside the boundaries of official culture, or later refined by Roger Cardinal to Outsider Art in 1972. Within those parameters it is possible for almost anyone except the academic orthodoxy to consider themselves an Outsider Poet, although in an ironic twist the most well known people claiming Outsider status lately are those doing huge University tours, receiving public grants, and using the entire arsenal of the orthodoxy to yell how Outsider they are.Outside what would be my first question.Poetry always exists for those who need it. The mentally ill and the disenfranchised will always get the hind tit just because they have no rel voice, and poetry is no exception. I like to think of Outsider Poetry less as a definition of how people feel in terms of their relationship to culture or society, and more how their internal state, including mental disability, may make interaction with that culture difficult, even impossible. There is really no shortage of outlets for the cacophony of teenagers, punkers, misanthropes, castoffs, and uncategorizable human self-exiles who want to define themselves as something other than human in order to make what is inherently uninteresting seem more interesting.The fact of this matter may be that there is only one Outsider Poet in this entire Universe... me. The rest of you are free to be whatever permutation and mutation or batch of humanity you so choose, or associate yourself in that way. I don't know anyone else like me, so I can't really say I'm in this boat with anyone else.

If Charles Krauthammer were a poet, he would be an Outsider Poet, mostly because no one else would want him.

Here's an Outsider Poem from a random Outsider Poet:

Faking Bad

In anticipation of my

Evaluation to be declared

Non Compos Mentos

I slept under a bridge

For three days

"Getting into character,"

But on the morning of

My intake interview

My hair fell perfectly,

I mean I looked like

A fucking rock star.

College girls on the bus

Were giving me their

Numbers and my skin,

Which I'd purposely sunburnt

And caked in the finest filth,

Glowed like an Australian

Chippendale dancer named Weegie

And even the female Assisstant D.A.

Who had busted me for vagrancy

Waved her panties from

The third story building

Of the Courthouse.

No matter how much I

Tried to speak gibberish

Poetry and philosophical

Tracts spewed from my mouth.

Shuffling past the park

I beat eight

Grand Masters

At chess on move 1

Inadvertently I solved

The Phi Epsilom Theorem

By kicking stones

Into an algorythym.

When I arrived they didn't

Make me wait at all.

My caseworker giggled like

A schoolgirl while I told her

Each day was like an endless shift

In a Chinese fish- gutting

Sweatshop and every one of my fellow

Employees was motivationalist

Richard Simmons.

She ungirdled her enormous

Tits and as they spilled

Like fishguts onto the desk

She began to howl

"Fuck me, fuck me, oh fuck

Me right here in

Front of the open window

On State Street as everyone

Watches me fucking the strongest,

Healthiest, smartest, most popular,

Well-adjusted man in the world.

The rest of the examination was

Also a success.

But as I left the Mental HealthCenter

feeling marvelous

I accidentally bumped

An old woman with the door:

"Watch out you manic-depressive

Schizoid with Socially Avoidant

Features klutz."

-Thomas L. Vaultonburg

Outsider artist Bradley Lastname sent me this waving hand and I decided it went with my Amok Time Bub the Zombie